Convention, Visitors Bureau Votes To Study Three Issues

Convention Bureau To Review Practices

New Contract With Agency Approved

September 27, 1991|By SHERI VENEMA; Courant Staff Writer

The Greater Hartford Convention and Visitors Bureau will take a closer look at how its salespeople are paid, whether it should continue to sponsor the Taste of Hartford, and whether it should be marketing out-of-state hotels.

"There's room there for a number of changes," said Margaret Tedone, a member of the Connecticut Convention Center Authority.

The convention bureau board voted Thursday morning to create separate task forces to study the three issues, Tedone said. Tedone serves as the authority's liaison to the board.

Meanwhile, the convention center authority Thursday approved a new one-year contract to pay the bureau $850,000 in return for marketing Hartford as a convention site. The money will come from the state tax on hotel rooms in the city. The approval ended an arduous process that started with a yearlong audit of the bureau's operations and strained the relationship between the authority and the bureau.

Problems uncovered by the audit caused several changes in the contract between the two bodies.

Bureau President Warren Trafton has chafed under the scrutiny and has said that the audit was politically motivated. Thursday, authority Comptroller Norvel Goff fumed that Trafton should either explain himself or put the matter to rest.

"I, as one authority member, will not stand by and have the executive director of the convention and visitors bureau lambaste this authority publicly or privately," Goff said. "State it here publicly. If not, let us not hear about it from this day forward. From this point forward I do not wish to hear any more innuendo. Let's bury it. It's over." Trafton did not respond at the meeting, but said later he agrees that the issue should be dropped.

"It's over," Trafton said. "We're not interested in pursuing anything that isn't constructive and positive." The bureau has been criticized for booking conventions outside the Hartford area -- in Mystic, Massachusetts and Vermont. Trafton has defended the practice, saying that, without a convention center in Hartford, the bureau must go outside the city to book larger conventions. But

Tedone said the board questioned the practice and might decide to drop the bureau's out-of-state members.

The recent audit raised questions about commissions paid to the bureau's sales staff. Salespeople earn commissions on attempts to book conventions as well as on definite bookings, and also on retaining and attracting members. In addition, one salesperson earns commissions for selling ads in the bureau's annual visitors guide.

Last year, the bureau's four salespeople earned a total of $118,766 in commissions.

The audit also found problems in the bureau's administration of the Taste of Hartford, an annual festival that showcases Hartford's restaurants. At the 1990 event, a roll of food and beverage tickets was unaccounted for, and some ticket booths could not reconcile the amount of money collected with the amount of tickets sold.

"Certain procedures need to be tightened," Tedone said. It may be time to hand the event over to another organization once the bureau begins to concentrate on marketing the new convention center, she said.

The three task forces will have reports ready for the bureau's next board meeting in November.